Remember
by daymarket
Summary: Du Namar Aurboda: "Word by word, the spell obliterated everything that defined them as thinking creatures, and the Forsworn had no choice but to watch in silent misery as their dragons descended into complete ignorance..." Oneshot.


_Aderes_.

The dragon raised his head slowly, fighting to keep control of a single thought, a single name. _His _name, the name that _his_ Rider had given him when he was but a hatchling. A simple word, yet it was so much more. It represented his life—past—_memory_. But it was fading, would soon be gone, so he could be free to claw or bite or slash or—

"No, no, _no_!" a voice cried from far away, distant and shadowed. "Stay with me—don't do this! Talk to me—I can't say your name, but you can, I know you can, talk to me! You can fight this; I know you can. You're a dragon, _my_ dragon, not some ignorant animal or beast. Remember? You hatched for me, your Rider, and the very first thing—the _very_ first thing that you did was try to bite my ear off. And it took a whole lot of bribery and two chickens before you'd stop eating me—remember? _Remember? _And then we—"

The dragon listened, watched, observed the human next to him, so persistent, so agitated, waving his hands around and talking in such a loud voice. He looked familiar, smelled familiar too, and instinctively the dragon knew that he shouldn't eat him, or challenge him with claw and talon for disturbing his rest. But the dragon was irritated, all the same. He wanted silence; silence to puzzle and wonder about these strange thoughts in his head; to use all sanity he had left to remember the name.

_Aderes!_

Dimly, he remembered—power, oaths, a host of voices shouting as one. And then pain. Pain not of the body, but of the mind, as thoughts fractured and splintered, dissipating into dust. The others fell first, succumbing to the magic, vanishing into mindless brutality. He'd seen them, attacking and clawing and _forgetting_, even as their Riders struggled to find some magic, some power that would hold against the tide. And inevitably, failing, falling.

Rider. _Rider_...

What did that mean? Tilting his head quizzically, the dragon ran the thought over and over in his mind, playing with the sounds as if it were a riddle. It meant something, he knew, something to do with the strange human shouting in front of him and with the undercurrent of thought that was always there in his head, showing him a life that wasn't his own. The life of his _Rider_, yes, his—

_Morzan? _

The word came out slowly, emerging from a dusty corner of whatever memory he had left. Saying it with his mind was hard; it was so much easier to roar or screech. But he had to do it; something left inside of the dragon said this insistently, wouldn't let him rest until he did so. The human's face changed visibly at the sound of the mind-spoken word—to what from what, the dragon wasn't sure, but surely it meant something. Maybe even something to do with his own word, _Aderes_,his own sounds that kept on staying persistently in his head even now when there was hunting to do and territory to guard.

Maybe the human would even go away now. The dragon longed for the human to leave him in peace, but at the same time wanted him to stay. Because the human meant something. Meant _Morzan_, meant _Rider_. And he meant a bridge to a past that the dragon no longer recalled, except for that single name. And that was important, although he didn't know why...

"Yes," the human said, his voice cracking and breaking like a thousand glittering shards of glass, sparkling in the darkness. "You said my name! Morzan, that's me, remember me? We've been together for—hell, maybe sixty years now, and every one of them has always been insane since you've hatched into my life, but I wouldn't give up a minute of it—I'd come up with some crazy or mad plan and you'd tear it to bits with that famous sarcasm of yours, but we end up anyway doing it despite the insane odds, and we always come out of it together—we'll come out of this one, too, because who cares about a bunch of dragons and their spell; we'll go through this one _together_, too, stay with me, don't go! _Please..._"

The dragon listened to the sounds, watching the human gesture and shout. It was interesting, and maybe even more than that, but he didn't know what the meaning, if there was any, was. And did it matter so much, really? Not when he was hungry. Not when he had territory to defend, or a mate to find.

The voice in his head was fading away into silence, vanishing into the abyss. Aderes, Aderes…

It was only a sound. But there were other sounds, more important, that signaled to primal instincts—threats to power, dominance, others trying to fight and attack. The human was small and as such no threat, even for all his rambling and shouting. But other sounds were, acutely heard by a predator's ear—wingbeats, whispers. The screech of another predator, coming to battle for mate and food.

The dragon spun around, its teeth bared in a snarl as it turned to face the threat, the last remnants of memory dimming and gone. After all, they meant nothing to an animal.

XXX

**A very short oneshot, I know. But this has been sticking in my mind ever since I read about Du Namar Aurboda, the Banishing of the Names. I've always had a certain affection for Morzan and Aderes (who is my own dry, mildly sardonic image of Morzan's dragon, and has been for quite a few of my fics. So um yeah). To find out that all of the Forsworns' dragons were crazed ignorant animals was quite disconcerting, really. So I wrote this to vent. Or to justify myself, I'm not sure for what.**

**Anyway. Hope you liked it. Review?**


End file.
